


Reverse Stillbirth

by slire



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Blood & Gore, Explicit Sexual Content, Other, Pantheism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Spinoza, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-01 08:43:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2766848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slire/pseuds/slire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles Upshur coming to terms with the Walrider, sexually (1) and spiritually (2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. slime sublime

_I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'mgonnadieI'mgonnadieI'mgonnaget_

Pulled!

upwards towards Heaven and then down to Hell again, up and down like a puppet. Is the Walrider playing with its food? Or is it preparing an exquisite feast? Frozen or canned or smoked or salted. Miles recalls the butcher next door, kneading, hands slick with animal fat. Carcasses dangled in the shop window. Miles is already bloody; a human served rare and sinewy to ne served in greasy soups and stews. Miles rolls off, the last strength leaving him. Fuck his deadlines. Fuck his critics. Fuck Murkoff. Fuck family. Fuck friends. Fuck life. And most of all fuck the nanocloud ghost god cunt, 'cos if he's gonna die he's gonna die laughing or

**SCREAMING**

because the Walrider is there again, on top of him on the floor, making his ears ring with the sheer force of its digital warped voice. Is he screaming? He doesn't know, he can't hear himself, just feels his jaw strain by how wide it's open. Black tendrils of a consistency like condom slime materialise, tonguing his pores and sucking up filth in an oddly

Erotic!

fashion. Another shove. Miles bars his teeth to the knowledge of what happens next, no, _no_ , **_no_** , but he's exhausted and the Walrider is blazing warm and almost cosy as its half lucid form engulfs him wholly, tearing at his clothes, wanting to get

Inside!

and grinds against him with not quite humanoid hips and jesus christ the Walrider presses its ugly head against— _into_ —his and slippery tongues lolls out and slides into his mouth, throat, belly... Cut it open! Get it out! Miles coughs and gags. _I don't want it inside of me!_ This is so horrifying Miles' is hardening and shaking at the same time. He would cry out but his mouth's occupied with a grotesque parody of human interaction, a repulsive make out session, black drooling into his eyes, blinding him. But he's Miles fucking Upshur and he twists around, an earthworm defying death, writhing in the hands of a god. A thin line of flesh, pink and squishy, with a swelled welt in the middle. Miles tries to stand but falls, then crawls, then wiggles, and his crusty jeans are at his ankles, yanked off, Walrider _behind above around_ him and

Enters!

with what is too slimy gooey oozy to be a sex organ. Tendrils wrap around Miles' dick and squeeze his balls. His flesh almost **burns** through and he imagines black burn holes in his back but he doesn't care, because the Walrider is hitting the gland that makes Miles' mouth dry. It is inside his head, testing his reactions, gnawing at his ear till it bleeds. It licks up the blood again, along with mucus, spit, precum, sweat and other fluids. Making him squeaky clean, like a wild animal to its offspring. The Walrider must be playing with matches behind his back because it's so hot. Miles shoves himself against the god cock, acting like a dog in heat, and hears the thing squelch and slurp. A hundred ebony baby fists knock at his skin, seeping past infection and pus with the intent of a virus, a virus that heals—for a price. Miles doesn't give a shit if they flay gobbets off because everything's enchanted, even pain. "Fuck me," he demands, hoarse and insane, "Oh god, _fuck me!_ " Tiny mouths at his nipples, big strong hands at his neck. He's terrified and horny, sky high and fucked. Doesn't matter how he twists and turns, the Walrider's all over him now. It's soaking up Miles' blood like a sponge.

The Walrider searches around in his rotten garbage head and finds a desire ( _I want my fucking fingers back!_ ) to fulfil, a dark spirit / terminal disease winning its host over. Miles has seen on tv how some bugs lay eggs inside other bugs and they burst. The Walrider soothes him by bringing his fingers back, skelentony and deformed, yes, but still fingers. 

"Th—thank you," Miles sobs, and whines, and whimpers, because the Walrider is kissing him with his whole melting smoke form.

 **Help you** , the voice says, dripping and drooling and hissing like Miles imagined it would've, but the scary thing is that it's a parody of his own voice, distorted and gruesome, **give up, give in, be mine!** The Walrider trembles with excitement if it's capable to feel it. **Will do anything for you** , it says, more human now, stealing from Miles' arsenal of human language. It wants to tear down Miles' last defences. And then the most horrible thing yet happens—it takes on a human form. Miles' form, to be exact, looking like a bucket of black paint has been thrown over him, eyes white white white like lamp lights. His mouth is more human—lips softer, teeth no longer daggers, hands pretty and thin as they stroke Miles' cock.

Miles sinks into the cold cold cold floor, so tired, feeling the Walrider inside his mind again. He wants this to be over. Wants to rest. Wants to sleep forever. The Walrides senses this, and denies his orgasm, controlling all Miles' senses, forcing him to be still. For someone whose entire existence revolves around the word MOVE this is torture. "N—no..."

**Will free and protect you, give in to me**

NotMiles drools as he says this, spewing motor oil or gore, smiling so wide his cheeks rip to his ears. More slime gushes out of the tear. He's planting sticky kisses and love bites on Miles' shoulders, pushing in and out. It's too much. Wit or sarcasm can't save him now. He

Cracks!

and doesn't even have to say it. The Walrider smiles wider and nonMiles vanishes into him, but not before all of Miles' pleasure senses go on full alert and he spurts heavy onto the cold lab floor. There is a pressure in his chest like another body growing from his belly and settling right under his skin. An internal feeling of satisfaction, of safe, of home. Miles' whole world is black, black, black. Miles laughs and ink blood spills from his eyes, nose, mouth and future bullet holes.

_Free._

_I am free._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  sublimate  
> [v. suhb-luh-meyt; n., adj. suhb-luh-mit, -meyt]
> 
> verb (used with object), sublimated, sublimating.
> 
> 1\. Psychology. to divert the energy of (a sexual or other biologicalimpulse) from its immediate goal to one of a more acceptable social,moral, or aesthetic nature or use.
> 
> 2\. Chemistry.  
> 1\. to sublime (a solid substance); extract by this process.  
> 2\. to refine or purify (a substance).
> 
> 3\. to make nobler or purer:  
> To read about great men sublimates ambition.


	2. slime divine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leeching onto (with permission!) a host theory made by divine lookingforstatic.tumblr.com — and presenting some new ideas altogether. more of a contemplative fic than that of the first part, critiques are welcome

_I will recover on my own._ _**God** _ _, I swear it._

It's got something to with freedom, and independence, and journalism—but there is also a core in this decision, a hole inside him where a foreign substance festers and discolours his thoughts.

Miles Upshur exits Mount Massive Asylum and stuffs the memories in a glass jar, screws the lid on tight and throws it away to some dark space of his mind, on hold. He then searches the earth for a cheap motel room where he will recover. The motel owner takes the bloody 100$ which Miles previously looted from an exploded corpse's wallet and tells him she won't rat on him as long as he keeps the cash coming. The motel room is small, with a double bed in the middle, with a bedside table containing sticky porn magazines and a complimentary Bible, a closet, and a big mirror. There's a bathroom, too, decently hygienic if you ignore the fungus in the corners. Safely barricaded in a dirty room, he starts working on his recovery. In Eden.

Miles calls Sarah, and J, and a columnist everybody calls Heathcliff, and he tells them that he has a big motherfucking story coming out, but wait, just wait,  _I need to sleep first._  Yet this does not prove a proper motivation: he still feels restless, and lonely.

Miles tells himself loneliness is strength. This is wrong. Loneliness is loneliness.

At night, his nightmares sound like demon typewriters and screaming fax machines. Paranoia breathes down his neck until he refuses to use his phone, the Internet or the TV. Modern gods, really. He's seen what scientist can do with nanotechnology; who knows how far electromagnetism has come. He gets by with candles, all while searching for ways to counter his madness. This is a cleansing process, like the one he learnt about when reading religious texts, the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud, even the Kama Sutra at one point, trying to make sense of the icy, ignorant 00s. However, Miles has never been spiritual, and recalls going to parties at uni with vegan yogis who claimed his aura visibly darkened after a cig and a hotdog on a nearby gas station.

He doesn't know what to feel, so he uses logic: To start healing, he must localise the hurt.

The shock is what has rendered his view blurry. Shock as a first stage of grief, perhaps—grief for a hundred dead lunatics. Or is it something else? No.  _No_. He must not fall into traps. Must not be creative, but logical, and logic takes the gaping wound that is Miles and divides it into three.

The 1st thing to unnerve him is the deformities. (He will ponder on that a little bit later, as he is not quite ready yet.)

The 2nd thing to unnerve him is that he is, technically, dead. There's a hole where his heart should be. He can see the bullet holes when he lifts his shirt up, on bad days, but the tissue soon regrows. Those go in the category of the deformities, yes. Scratching them results in scabs coming off in flakes, mind flooded with  **STOP**  and  **DON'T**  before they heal themselves.

Because there's a pretence in him. That's the 3rd thing. He's aware of its influence, though it has not bothered him again like when it first... entered him. Is the Walrider resting? Regaining strength? Will it pop out and suddenly take over? The thought of unnoticed influence, losing control and potential appearances grows Miles' paranoia like strangling vine.

So in conclusion, the problems that he must deal with are (1) deformities, (2) disease and (3) derangement. It is the times when he dwells on them that the deformities show the best.

Which brings him to the subject of…

Slime.

Ejected more now that he's in distress, and he finds himself speeding to the dirty bathroom. The slime pours from open channels, a distorted replica of blood or mucus dyed ink black. Crying ink. A nice metaphor for his journalistic side, currently dormant. He wipes at the slime, ripping his shirt off while it leaks out of ears, mouth, nose, eyes... The bullet wounds, also leaking the stuff, are visible in the mirror. So is the shape behind him.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit—

Long appendages, wrapping around his torso. Arms. Muscled. Veins, even. Miles is frozen. The head, slowly materializing, lies on his shoulder. Not a human's, nor an insect's. It awaits Miles reaction. Its own can not be guessed. The Walrider is, after all, not human. Miles isn't even sure what level of awareness it has. Fluids continue oozing out of Miles. The Walrider liked to see him spew, cry, or being denied the fundamental right to piss, he'd felt it... When had its obsession with fluids begun? ...Well, Miles had been drooling when the Walrider fucked his ass and whatnot.  _That_  memory makes him act. He gasps, wrestles himself loose (not much wrestling going on because the Walrider becomes smoke) and sprints for the bed to dive under the sheets like a child confronted with the horror of reality. The sheets stain. And again, like a child, he feels loneliness so deep one would think he was alone in the universe. He remembers the quote about the last man on Earth.

_And then there was a knock on the door._

The Walrider nuzzles against Miles' back.  **You are not alone,**  it says (or projects? Miles can't tell in his shock / dream / limbo state).  **You are a part of everything.**   **You are in nature and nature is in you.**  Yes. That will become very clear to him, if his t-cell count drops. Then he'd become aware of the æther of life surrounding him, ever ready to become a part of him, ever ready to have him become a part of it. He imagines his own face rotting. And suddenly sensations flood him, the Walrider heightening his senses. Mites in the mattress, feeding off slept off skin. Creatures in the air, breathed in. There are fungi in his fingernails, and the motel owner's eyelashes swarm with lice. Miles' mouth is home to bacteria and rot, or it's not, because his salvia kills living things.

The Walrider withdraws and vanishes and Miles  _gasps_.

He is alone again, trapped inside himself. The Walrider has retreated so deep even cutting himself open won't get it out. His body betrays him. An automation locked within the laws of biology, separate and unrecognizable. Briefly, he fantasies about starving himself so that he can reach bone and self. Or barbeque it, maybe, roast it until it falls of in sloughs. Then,  _then_  he could be free from the beast that occupies the same cage as he does and drives him mad. He'd become a part of something bigger—or just become a nothing. That'd work too. The suicide thoughts come along with the dripping ink, and when they've started there is no stopping them. Garbage is invading his mind; his ears are open drains for the public sewer and his is a cesspool. Sure he can turn off everything electric but it doesn't matter, because he can't stop thinking. He finds sayings like  _"I'll make up my own mind about that"_  and  _"Miles' a boy who's got a mind of his own"_  idiotic _,_  as if Miles had a clean country cottage in his head instead of a traumatized, post-industrial slagheap. Miles doesn't have a hope in hell of making his mind up, because his mind is clogged by garbage. There is no originality in one's thoughts; everything is a copy of a copy of a copy, and constructed by influence, really. Skin's okay for keeping meat in, but it doesn't keep everything out, Walrider or not. The shock dies down. He finds himself flickering through old photographs, reminding him how life is supposed to be lived—in the midst of movement, adventure, rock n roll, high desert, wastelands, badlands, concerts, dimly lit bars where they play jazz, brown brick apartments, with all the water in the world, all the wine in the world, etc. He aches after the big lusty TTOK-sound wine bottles make when they open.

Okay, so Miles has established his issues, and must now work again with the knowledge that the Walrider will not suddenly vanish.

"Can I live with you," he searches for the correct words, "while you live inside me?"

In terms of biology, that'd be called a symbiosis; an agreement between the host and the parasite. But there is no answer. Is the creature pure technology, or is it biological? Or a mixture? A machine that doesn't know it's a machine? Miles thinks of artificial intelligence and tears in rain. These questions are making him sick. "What  _are_  you?"

**What.**

It hits him like a perfume to heavy for summer—the smell of gasoline and blood.

**What. What.** **_What_ ** **.**

The Walrider is in front of him again, having adapted Miles' own skin for the first time since the entrance. The double remains dyed like a grainy photo negative, and lacks finesse and detail. Its—his?—nails are too long, it lacks a mouth, its eyes expressionless yet malicious, and it is naked and without genitalia. The thing sits cross-legged on the bed, but doesn't stain it.

Miles swallows thickly, trying to make sense of the whys. The projection of its voice is dissimilar than when it reflected upon nature, more personal , less... repetitive? The Walrider sounds like a malfunctioning social network, spewing up text fragments from previous conversations. It seems to copy his words to communicate. From where? Old dialogue? No, Miles prefers to broadcast his handiwork through video or text, so he'd not spoken in the madhouse, just screamed. Billy didn't speak, either, but Miles doubts he was sane enough. "You don't… You don't know...?" Because there a question, here, a will to understand... something.

**Joy** , it projects.

The emotion knocks him back and it must be a mix of hormones and nerve signals that sends him into god mode. Sensory overload. For a few seconds, he feels beautiful and terrible, equivalent to an orgasm—one of those when you come and  _be_ come kinda disappointed. When wakes from his happy coma the corners of his dry lips have ripped from smiling so wide. The Walrider studies its exhausted host. Happiness, it seems, is not one of its skills.

**Sadness.**

**Anger.**

**Disgust.**

They all ripple through Miles, the Walrider  _experimenting_  with its dear host. Miles goes from crying to shouting to trying to claw his skin off. NotMiles' form show no outward signs of emotion, crawling closer, until it grins. Or what would've been a grin, if it hadn't been absolutely insane.

**Fear.**

This, it succeeds at. It hovers above Miles on all fours, body morphing, becoming shapeless like tar, before it begins—

"What the fuuuu...!"

—drooling. A slick, slimy film. Wet. Wiggling. Clammy, like earthworms in pelting rain. With a sickening  _pop_ , the jaw falls halfway off. In the midst of becoming fucking terrified, Miles' mind makes an absurd comparison to string cheese. Or third degree burns or messed up pizza dough with lumpy liquid tomato sauce. The head starts moving from one side to the other, shaking the tongue hanging out like a giant paralyzed slug, teeth not rooted by anything but threads in the flesh, and oh fuck Miles knows he has this from a horror movie, and the Walrider presses its wet face against Miles', shit shit shiiit

"Stop! Stop! Leave me!" He's screaming, a mess of words, but frozen solid. "Get out! Get out of me! Get out!"

**?**

**?**

**?!**

Suddenly, it comprehends. Its mouth twist into what is definitely a sneer. Without further prompting, it vanishes. The filth remains. Miles blinks, finding himself alone. He goes still, and counts, because he can do little else, praying to God that He'll reset Armageddon. 10 seconds. 15 seconds. 20.

Miles' pupils lessen into tiny dots.

Breathing becomes hard. Real blood starts running out of him, out of his bullet holes, and his heart

is

he's

dying

and wonders momentarily if the Walrider communicated through mental txtspeak—because he has an impression it's sending him a smiley.

**:)**

Miles' sight goes first, then his hearing, taste, sense of feeling... His sense of smell, however, acutely remains, and the stink of gasoline mixed with blood is gruesome.  _Fear FEAR FEAR FEAR._ He tries desperately to convey his desperation. It's obvious the Walrider has not left entirely, or he would be dead. There seems to be holes where his lungs should've been, too.

_no stop hell_

_help please_

_god_

And then it's gone again. The pain, too. The dying. He can see again, feel, touch, but he's exhausted and slips into a void.

.

.

Miles wakes again. There is no more slime, just the smell.

But one simple observation chills him to the bone: four indentions in the sheets.

Hands. Knees. Evidence that something was there when he slept, kneeling over him, staring with empty eyes. Miles shudders and gets up, the blinds letting some sunlight into the stinking motel room.  _Okay. Okay. You can do this. You're not dead_. He gets his stored away computer to Write. His fingers do the thinking, beginning the Article, a goal, a God. Miles goes into the alpha state, a state before one sleeps, autosuggestion and autohypnosis. He writes with what writers call the cold eye, analytical and icy. In the midst of it all he finds himself wondering how his cell structure looks like, tiny contorted apparatuses where cells should be, and searches it up online. The photos are disgusting. Parasites burrowing into the feet of people working internationally. Larvae cocooning inside ladybugs. Words like incubator, host,  _bursting_. Bugs laying eggs inside other bugs; he's thought of that one before. He switches back to the word document to resume writing. And... there. In the lower paragraph of his text.

**:)**

(Miles does not know if he was the one to write that.)

It's almost commercial, how a simple smiley almost makes him break the computer. Miles breathes hard, looking around. No Walrider. No more goo or indentions on the bed.  _What do you want?_  he writes, uncertain if he's encouraging it. No answer. He tries again.  _How much do you understand?_

There is a pause, and a wave of powerful nausea, in which Miles leans to the side to throw up before it's gone again.

**EVERYTHING**

Miles tries to keep his breathing regular. It speaks to him. This is... good, he supposes, unless this is a game. The Walrider is a machine, must be, and although the programming tells it to act like a humanoid there still exists programming. Programming that can be corrupted or annulled.

"Jesus," Miles says.

**WRONG** , the text document spells.

That takes a little while to understand.

...Oh fuck no.

Angry, he deletes the previous messages until all that's left is his article. A parasite is one thing, a parasite with megalomania is another. Deciding to be productive as he works through the stress (and trauma of dying a second time), he flickers through old essays, and his collection of travel stories spanning coast to coast, seedy late night Greyhound stations to lonesome Central Cal beaches, neon-lit New Orleans backstreets to endless cornfields. America as a giant Walmart. Who'd said that, again? Some singer in a pub, yeah? Miles gets a thick granny sweater and a bottle of vodka with a brown lunchbag around it—because before monsters and lunatics and bathtubs filled with blood there was a thing such as shame—and gets back to writing. His bullet wounds are open, as a warning. "Ghost god nanocloud cunt," he says, slurring, not bothering to spell properly. Angry, he deletes a paragraph, regrets it and reconstructs it, then deletes it again, clicks the regret arrow, saves and slams the PC lid down.

"Where d'ya get these things anyway?" Miles asks into the air. "The words... the faces... Sure as hell ain't mine, not twelve anymore..."

He looks around, and sees the mirror. In it, there's a dark shapeless mass.

Miles twists to the side to watch the real world, where the enigma would be, but nothing's there. Just in the mirror. At the same time with the mass, Miles leans forward, drunk but creeped out. The reflection frowns, looking more human now, and knocks on the mirror. Grins. Vertigo makes Miles run for the bathroom, unreal or not. He throws up in the toilet bowl. When looking in the bathroom mirror, the Walrider is there too. "What the fuck do you want?" Miles shouts.

The Walrider stares. Then it becomes...

Someone else.

Miles frowns, thinking he's seen the person somewhere. Still treacle black, yes, but the woman in the mirror looks familiar.

"Mom," he says, and swallows thickly. It's in there with him now. Something kisses his neck, erotically. The Walrider's mouth, in his mother's skin. Miles closes his eyes.  _This is so fucking wrong_. "Stop," he whispers, disgust evident in his voice. To his surprise, the Walrider does so, dismissing the shape and shifting to another. His father, repeating the action. Did they make the Walrider absorb Freud's books or something? "No," he says, and again, the Walrider listens. It shifts through multiple people, celebrities and old lovers. Miles remains drunk and sobbing and despairing, shaking his head. The Walrider  _whines_. It sounds like the typewriters and fax machines in his dreams. Somehow it still manages to guide them to the bed.

Back to the beginning.

And just like that, Miles realizes there is no end to his nightmare. He will remain like this until he dies—if the parasite lets him. Right now, is seems concerned with his health though. Pushing him on the bed, softly, looking him over. He floats, momentarily, wondering if he's going to go into an Exorcist pose, but the Walrider only wants him to be comfortable.

"What do you want?" he asks, so tired.

**You... You...**

"You want me?"

Or is it love, as a final emotion?

No answer. The Walrider, in its proper shape now, is above him. Wearing sweatpants suddenly seems like a bad idea, especially with the speed they're ripped off along with his boxers. Slime forms rope or earthworms that tie Miles' slim arms to the bed frame. The Walrider tilts his head to the side as if it's listening. It kisses him again, slowly, leach-tongue absent but teeth, ah... Miles' mouth starts bleeding, but the gashes quickly heal. It pulls his sweater up to his chest, continuing its fetishist obsession with Miles' nipples. (It pulled the sweater up a lot higher than Christ would've done to show his wounds). It doesn't take long before the Walrider's on top of him, already gushing the usual filth. It gazes at him as if he were a pet, to be fed and bathed and thoroughly fucked into submission. The last bit there's pretty sick. The Walrider continues courting him. It feels like...

Bugs underneath his skin.

Teeth on mere meat strings, being pulled out, pain a mere sting of needles. Like removing excess.

Miles kisses back, erection bobbing inside the black smear, meeting resistance and a movement like a gentle earthquake.  _Disgusting_ , he thinks, and to his shock and dawning horror the Walrider stops the ministrations. It focuses on entering him instead. It seems to know what Miles wants. Did it always...? NotMiles reappear from the chest up. The rest continues to fuck him.

A reflection of himself.

"Nngh... What... d'you want?" Miles asks a final time.

**I want... You want...**

A pause, while Miles is being stretched open, invaded.

**I want what you want.**

Always.

And while horrific truth dawns on Miles, the Walrider chooses this moment to start thrusting into him. Because he wants it, Miles realizes. He actually wants this.

All of it.

The emotion, the punishment, the social interaction, and finally, sex.

The first time, also. He wanted it. He wanted the Walrider. And so, it took him. Miles starts thrusting against the Walrider, grinning, laughing, not caring if his jaw comes loose or not. He's beyond fear. He's beyond love. And he had been so afraid! Terrified!

The Walrider is a goal in itself. To reach nirvana, while alive when you are supposed to be dead. He and his body and the pain are one. All separation is erased. You must embrace this to come away clean. You must value the importance of emotion. Whether it is pleasure or pain, is not important. No pills, here. He thinks he's ready to leave the room, afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Walrider continues fucking him, changing into all sorts of faces.

Everyone. Everything.

All—whole and absolute.

_God,_  Miles thinks. 

_One._

_We are one._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (cue dumb reference)
> 
> i see ur handsome face dont b so sad about it


End file.
